1. Field of Invention
The present invention is directed to an apparatus and method for transmitting, receiving, and switching multimedia across an Ethernet network.
2. Description of Related Art
Presently, audio and video are transmitted over various mediums for various purposes. These purposes include security transmissions, class lecture transmissions (distance learning), business seminar transmissions, surgical procedure transmissions, video conferencing transmissions, and the like. For example, security cameras are stationed at various remote locations in a building. The security video from the cameras is transmitted over dedicated lines and switches to a security station to monitor activity at the remote locations. Quite often the buildings having such security systems also have local area data networks such as Ethernet networks for transmitting data. Unfortunately, two separate systems must be used for the security and data network systems because of problems encountered in combining the systems.
In particular, security video is time sensitive and encounters unacceptable delays when transmitted on a data network. Additionally, data networks do not provide adequate bandwidth for transmitting uncompressed real time continuous video. Thus, the transmission of video across a data network requires extensive compression. Unfortunately, such compression is slow, complex, and/or prohibitively expensive for security systems, or the like. Furthermore, data networks do not prioritize video data. Therefore, the video data is often broken up and suffers considerable delays. Similar problems are encountered in the transmission of lectures, seminars, video conferencing, and other like real time video transmissions. Thus, independent networks must be maintained for uncompressed real time continuous video transmission and for data transmission because combining the transmissions is ineffective and/or cost prohibitive.